Kirk Herbstreit hails Carson Beck for battling through adversity in semifinal thriller
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Kirk Herbstreit didn’t approach the level that Carson Beck has reached at the quarterback position, either at Georgia or especially now at Miami, but he has a certain appreciation for what success looks like as a signal-caller.
The ESPN college football analyst and former Ohio State QB spoke late Thursday night about what Beck had to fight through to get the Hurricanes to the finish line during the network’s postgame show with play-by-play man Chris Fowler. It was hardly just Beck’s numbers from the epic semifinal victory over Ole Miss — 23-of-37 passing for 268 yards, 2 touchdown passes and 1 interception — because those look like ordinary stats, as does his 78.3 QBR from the winning performance.
It was way, way more than that, with Beck not blinking after Ole Miss grabbed a 27-24 lead with 3:13 left in the game. Beck simply took the ball and led the Canes down the field on a magical game-winning touchdown drive that he himself capped with a 3-yard TD scramble with just 18 seconds remaining. It took some big-time heart for Beck to do what he did, and that was Herbstreit’s point in the immediate aftermath.
“When you meet a guy like this who’s been through what he’s been through, it takes time to build trust,” said Herbstreit of Beck. “When (Miami) lost to Louisville and lost to SMU, it wasn’t finger-pointing. It was, everything’s alright, let’s learn. That was the middle of the year, and they never have looked back since then.”
Herbstreit also pointed to Beck and Miami being the last team into the College Football Playoff, and how Beck has led the Canes to a first-round victory at Texas A&M before helping them take down defending national champion Ohio State.
Then came Thursday night’s thriller in the desert and Beck being at the center of it all, right down to the final, heroic seconds.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
